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Consumer Track: What Companies Do to Scale Up?
By siliconindia
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Tuesday, 15 November 2011, 02:46 IST
Bangalore: RedBus.in, a rapidly growing Indian startup, is revolutionizing the way people book bus tickets. Today, this more than 100 crore company, mainly concentrates on two key points when it comes to scaling. "Focus on product" is the first and foremost thing in scaling and "we worked on conversion rate since day one," said Phanindra Sama, CEO of RedBus and states that it's their website, call centre and the outlets that helped the company scale up to this level.
They had a lot of discoveries on how the conversion rate increases. Recently a change of photograph on home page has made conversion so evident for the company. Being cost conscious was another factor that kept them relaxed. The transaction made by people matters more to them than number of people visiting the site. Internet has made the company available to all across every part of the world, so that works as a positive point for the company. On a trip to China recently, he came across the fact that the largest travel company in China has around 8000 recruitments in the call centre, they work like an OTA, and that made Phanindra realize that "We are on the same track". "Call centers have helped us a lot in terms of scaling up and generating revenues", said the CEO.
Vijay Shekhar, the Chairman and Managing Director of One97 Communications, founded his first venture XS Corps while he was at college, which he later sold to Lotus Interworks LLC, New Jersey in 1999. He started off in a bit different way. He always wanted to shift from human base system to machine based online system for his business. Aiming to own the largest voice platform in the country, today his company has couple of thousands employees, more than two billion calls a week and every call is paid for, thus making more than 100 crores of profit.
Phanindra feels that the pass on effect was really helpful for scaling. Initially, the pamphlets distributed by them gave them a bigger exposure as the consumers started to get information about the company and they passed it on to their colleagues and family members. So this marketing strategy helped a lot. Using software in bus operating system helped getting customers.
He said, the core team of the company should believe in your philosophy. Phanindra says, "When the person is there just hire him, don't wait for vacancy". Recently, they hired the President of Tata Communications as COO of the company only because he was available."We don't recruit people if we are not convinced".
Another speaker B.G.Mahesh, internet application ideator and implementor feels that "Print is shrinking and media has been growing" so internet plays an important role in scaling up. Alok Mittal, the moderator for the session feels that putting voice in the system can help in scaling up.
